Conductor Roderick Brydon, one of the unsung heroes of Scottish musical life, died last week. The list of his achievements shows just how crucial he was for Scotland's music over the past few decades. Brydon was the Scottish Chamber Orchestra's first principal conductor and artistic director, he was one of the guiding lights of Scottish Opera's early history, and became a major figure on the international stage, especially in Australia and Switzerland, where he was in charge of the opera houses of Lucerne and Berne, as well as guest conducting in opera houses from Los Angeles to Covent Garden.

As Conrad Wilson says in his obituary in the Glasgow Herald, it was Brydon's advocacy of Britten's operas that made him so important in the 1960s and 70s. He did as much as anyone to establish works such as The Turn of the Screw and Albert Herring in the repertoire, his performances inspired by a deep love of the music and a close working relationship with the composer.

So why wasn't Roddy more feted towards the end of his life? A combination of ill-health and changed personal circumstances conspired to make him a rare guest on Scotland's podiums in his last years. His final public appearance was with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, six years ago in an evening of Viennese bonbons.

I only met Roddy in 2008 at a dinner for the Preshal Trust, a charity set up by my father and May Nicholson that works for underprivileged families and communities in Govan, Glasgow. I got talking to the man sitting next to me, who asked me courteously about my musical background, and he said that he worked in classical music too. We got on the subject of Wagner's Parsifal, when he told me he had conducted the opera in Switzerland. It's one thing to "work in" classical music – but quite another to have conducted one of the greatest pieces of music ever written in a major European opera house. I immediately felt a right eejit for having discoursed at length on having seen Parsifal in Bayreuth, in front of someone who had actually conducted it. It was only as we talked that I realised exactly who I was talking to: too young to have seen him in his heyday with the SCO or Scottish Opera, I simply hadn't recognised Roddy. His modesty masked his huge importance in Scotland's classical musical culture. There isn't enough of a recorded legacy of his work or on YouTube, but Roddy deserves an enduring and grateful fanfare for his life in music, and his generosity of spirit.